


as bad as it looks

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: F/M, Feel-good, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Multi, Pre-Relationship, just Duke and Audrey worrying about their disaster of a not-yet-boyfriend, late s1ish, pregull threegulls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: Duke rarely worries about Audrey during a fight. She’s smart, capable, and good in a crisis. And—most importantly—he can trust her to retreat when the situation gets too dire. Nathan, on the other hand, is obstinate, relies way too much on instinct for someone with terrible instincts, and never knows when to quit. He's going to send Duke to an early grave from the sheer anxiety of it.
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Audrey Parker/Nathan Wuornos
Comments: 30
Kudos: 109





	as bad as it looks

Nathan Wuornos is the most stubborn son of a bitch Duke has ever met. It is, infuriatingly, one of his best qualities. That doesn’t mean Duke has to like it. He _especially_ doesn’t like the bullheaded way Nathan seems to equate lack of pain with lack of _problem_.

Duke assumed, when he first started tagging along on cases, that the biggest thing he’d have to worry about was getting fucking nerfed by a trouble.

Turns out, the biggest thing he has to worry about is _Nathan_ getting nerfed by a trouble.

(“You’re not a superhero just because you can’t feel pain, Nathan!” Duke had snapped at him once, after Nathan—in extremely typical Wuornos fashion—refused to go to the hospital even though a troubled teenager had just thrown him _through a wall_.

“I’m fine,” Nathan barked at him, “I’m not bleeding.”

“Yeah, on the _outside_ ,” Duke hissed, throwing his hands up in frustration.

“I’d know if something was wrong.”

Duke had seen that particular talent in action. ‘Wrong’, in Nathan’s case, amounted to massive blood loss, head damage severe enough to wreck his cognition, and bones so broken they couldn’t hold weight anymore.

“You’re fucking yourself over,” Duke snarled. “Someday the troubles are gonna end, and you’re barely gonna be able to _walk_.”)

Nathan has spent the last hour of with a length of rebar sticking out of his shoulder, doggedly insisting that they need him and that he’d go to the hospital once they finished the case. Now, he’s bickering with Dwight as the EMTs load him into the back of an ambulance with harrowed looks on their faces. Repeatedly, they press him back down when he tries to insist he doesn’t need a stretcher.

“Please, Mr. Wuornos, it’s procedure,” a particularly stressed EMT urges.

“It’s in my shoulder, I can still _walk_ —”

“It’s _through_ your shoulder,” Dwight corrects, climbing into the back of the ambulance along with him. This, Duke suspects, is more for the EMTs’ sake than for Nathan’s. He’ll be like this whole ride.

“I’m gonna kill him myself,” Duke grumbles, sinking heavily down onto the curb and running his hands over his face.

Audrey settles beside him and braces her elbows on her knees. “Not if I kill him first.”

Duke rarely worries about Audrey during a fight. She’s smart, capable, and good in a crisis. And—most importantly—he can trust her to retreat when the situation gets too dire. Nathan, on the other hand, is obstinate, relies way too much on instinct for someone with terrible instincts, and never knows when to quit.

“Was he always this stupid?” Audrey sighs.

“Yes,” Duke answers without even a second of hesitation. “I mean, the stakes were lower when we were—you know—ten. But yes. Absolutely.”

(“You’re gonna give me a fucking heart attack,” Duke moaned, watching Nathan wander around with his arm at an odd angle.

“I think it’s dislocated,” Nathan said, cool as anything, like he was discussing the goddamn weather.

“Oh, _you think_?” Duke snapped. Nathan turned to glare at him, and his arm swung limply at his side and Duke felt his stomach turn.

“Would you shut up and help me pop it back?”

“Oh, no,” Duke said with a low laugh. “No, no, no. You’re not roping me into this one. No, you’re going to the _hospital_.”

“It’s _fine_ —” Nathan began, but Audrey interrupted him.

“Duke’s right,” she said, making a face at the awful, unnatural jut of his shoulder. “You’re not supposed to relocate it yourself. You could break something.”

Letting out a frustrated sound, Nathan took to pacing like some kind of feral cat.

“You’re mad because we’re right.”

“Shut up, Duke.”

“Come on, tough guy,” Audrey sighed, motioning for Nathan. “Sooner we go, sooner it’ll be over.”

Nathan, extremely begrudgingly, headed for the car, but not before he cast Duke a look that said, _this is your fault and you know it_. Duke just grinned.)

“I don’t like hospitals,” Nathan mumbles, staring down at the gash on his arm that is absolutely going to need stitches. Duke knows how to give them ( _thanks, pops_ ), but he isn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of giving Nathan a homebrew patch-job when the hospital is _right there_ and he knows for a fact that Nathan’s got damn good health insurance.

“Nobody _likes_ hospitals,” he points out, pulling the first aid kit from the trunk of his car and dabbing at the mess of blood with a—probably—clean rag. He’ll disinfect it in a minute, anyway. It’s fine. It’s probably fine. It’s as fine as it’s going to get without actual medical attention.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Nathan pushes, and Audrey makes a face at him.

“It looks pretty fucking bad, Nathan,” she tells him, crossing her arms and watching Duke work.

No matter how much Duke thinks he’s used to Nathan’s trouble, there’s still something utterly bizarre in dousing a cut like this in rubbing alcohol and not getting so much as a flinch. It might be impressive if it weren’t utterly terrifying.

The biggest problem with Nathan’s trouble is that not every injury is as easy to spot as a knife wound. If nobody _sees_ Nathan take a hit, there’s a good chance they won’t even know he’s hurt. And in the middle of a supernatural firefight, Duke and Audrey have a tendency to be a little _distracted_. Nobody even realized that Nathan had actually been cut, this time, until blood started dripping down his fingers. But not everything bleeds, and sometimes things are _worse_ than they look, and Nathan is going to send him to an early grave from the sheer anxiety of it.

“We’re gonna have to find a compromise,” Duke sighs, securing the wound closed with a row of butterfly bandages. “Because this? Is stressing me out.”

(“Pain is how the body tells you something is wrong,” Duke’s physical therapist had said, after a storm and a slippery deck slammed him into the mast and fucked up his back so bad, he thought he would never be the same. “I know you’re angry with it, right now, but hurting is your body’s way of protecting you.”)

Compromise comes in the form of a post-case pat down. It’s clinical and exasperated—Duke going over the basics, looking for issues. The three of them finally settled on an agreement that Duke won’t send Nathan to Gloria for anything that isn’t an actual emergency on the condition that Nathan actually _goes_ when Duke says he needs to.

While Audrey fills Dwight in on the most recent situation, Duke and Nathan go through their usual routine.

“You bleeding?” Duke asks, motioning for Nathan to take off his coat.

“No,” Nathan says flatly.

“Mm-hm,” Duke drones, disbelieving. “Spin.”

Sighing loudly, Nathan holds up his arms and turns, proving his clothes to be unbloodied.

Duke lifts the sleeve of Nathan’s t-shirt higher on his bicep to reveal the purpling, early stages of a bruise from where his shoulder crashed into a wall, a few hours ago.

“How high can you lift this?” Duke asks, and Nathan answers by raising it all the way above his head. “Good, good,” Duke hums. He takes Nathan’s chin in his hand—a motion Nathan sees rather than feels—and turns it to the side. “He get you in the face?”

“Elbow,” Nathan answers.

“Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.” He pats the un-marked cheek with a gentle, affectionate slap. “So much for your modeling career, champ.”

Nathan rolls his eyes, but he can’t quite hide his smile. “Shut up.”

“You fell, earlier. How’d you catch yourself?”

“Hands.”

“Mm-hm. Lemme see ‘em.” Duke motions for Nathan’s hands and he presents them. His palms are scraped and dirty. Duke turns them over, flexing Nathan’s wrists experimentally. “Make a fist,” he instructs, and Nathan does.

“What’s the prognosis, doc?” Nathan jokes, watching the careful way Duke handles him. There’s something intimate about it, how he runs his fingers along Nathan’s knuckles. If he asked, Duke would probably say he was checking for swelling. Nathan could point out that he could just _look_ for it. He doesn’t say anything—just watches himself being touched and wonders what it feels like.

“You’ll live,” Duke decides. He lets go of Nathan’s hands to clap him on the shoulder, remembering too late that it’s the bruised one. “Oh shit, sorry.”

“Agonizing,” Nathan teases, his voice flat but his eyes bright, “it hurts so bad, how could you.”

Duke snorts. “Yeah, yeah. Real funny, wise guy.”

“How bad is it?” Audrey chimes as she jogs up to join them.

“He’s a massive dick,” Duke tells her, “It’s terminal.”

Laughing, Audrey shoves Duke’s shoulder and his faux indignance cracks into a smile.

“Glad you’re still in one piece,” Audrey teases, which Duke counters with a grumbled, “For _now_.”

Nathan lifts his hands in something between a surrender and a ‘hold up’. “I can take care of myself,” he protests.

“Uh-huh. Put your coat back on,” Duke tells Nathan, “It’s cold.”

Nathan does, albeit with an exaggerated roll of his eyes that’s undercut by the grin he can’t quite wipe off his face. As they head toward the car, Nathan jokes, “So what do I get for coming out in one piece?”

“What do you _get_?” Duke echoes in disbelief, falling into step beside him.

“Pancakes?” Nathan asks.

Duke snorts a laugh. “He’s obsessed.”

“I think he’s earned pancakes,” Audrey chimes, and Duke groans.

“Don’t encourage him.”

“It’s positive reinforcement,” she insists, hooking her arm through Nathan’s.

Duke sighs dramatically, but he slings an arm around Nathan’s neck anyway. “Yeah, alright. Pancakes it is.”


End file.
